evolution of agriculture in ants

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 281; no. 5385; pp. 2034 - 2038
• Main Authors: Mueller, U.G, Rehner, S.A, Schultz, T.R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Society for the Advancement of Science 25-09-1998; American Association for the Advancement of Science; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Agricultural history; Agricultural Occupations; Agriculture; Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Animals; ant fungi farming; Ants; attini; Autoecology; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Biological evolution; Crops; cultivars; ecology; Evolution; Formicidae; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Fungi; Fungiculture; Genera; genetic variation; Genetics; Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution; History; Insect colonies; Insect genetics; Insect nests; Insects; Maximum Likelihood Statistics; Parsimony; phylogeny; Plant domestication; Protozoa. Invertebrata; symbiosis; tillage; Tribes; Symbiosis; Formicidae; Insecta; Biological evolution; Formicoidea; Fungi; Animal plant relation; Arthropoda; Fungus growing insect; Agriculture; Hymenoptera; Invertebrata; Aculeata; Thallophyta; Cultivar
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5385.2034

Cultivation of fungi for food by fungus-growing ants (Attini: Formicidae) originated about 50 million years ago. The subsequent evolutionary history of this agricultural symbiosis was inferred from phylogenetic and population-genetic patterns of 553 cultivars isolated from gardens of "primitive" fungus-growing ants. These patterns indicate that fungus-growing ants succeeded at domesticating multiple cultivars, that the ants are capable of switching to novel cultivars, that single ant species farm a diversity of cultivars, and that cultivars are shared occasionally between distantly related ant species, probably by lateral transfer between ant colonies.